Geographic analysis help locate clusters of diseased coral

Washington, July 31 (ANI): Applying Geographic Information Systems, known as GIS - as well as software previously used to examine human illness - University of Florida scientists have been able to find locations where clusters of diseased coral exist.

In the last 30 years, more than 90 percent of the reef-building coral responsible for maintaining major marine habitats and providing a natural barrier against hurricanes in the Caribbean has disappeared because of white-band disease, WBD, of unknown origin.

Their findings may help scientists derive better hypotheses to determine what contributes to this coral disintegration.

The goal of this current study was to use GIS and spatial analysis to search for patterns in a WBD outbreak that might point to a mode of transmission or cause, study co-author Jason Blackburn.

"With these methods, we gain a better understanding of the disease's distribution across the reef," said Blackburn, a UF professor of geography and member of UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute.

"What we found was that colony-level sampling, where individual Acropora colonies are counted and checked for disease, can show a far different picture of white-band disease than where only presence/absence of coral and disease are mapped," he said.

The researchers used data gathered in 2004 from scientists stationed at Buck Island National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The researchers determined that 3 percent of the Acropora coral around Buck Island had WBD.

They also found the locations of significant disease clusters, information scientists can then use to narrow where they should take samples for further laboratory tests.

The study was published this month in the journal PLoS One. (ANI)